d down, and with a kindly yet timid compassion spread
over a countenance crimsoned with habitual libations. This made the
scene,--save that on a chair by the bedside lay a profusion of long,
glossy, golden ringlets, which had been cut from the head of the sufferer
when the fever had begun to mount upwards, but which, with a jealousy
that portrayed the darling littleness of a vain heart, she had seized and
insisted on retaining near her; and save that, by the fire, perfectly
inattentive to the event about to take place within the chamber, and to
which we of the biped race attach so awful an importance, lay a large
gray cat, curled in a ball, and dozing with half-shut eyes, and ears that
now and then denoted, by a gentle inflection, the jar of a louder or
nearer sound than usual upon her lethargic senses. The dying woman did
not at first attend to the entrance either of Dummie or the female at the
foot of the bed, but she turned herself round towards the child, and
grasping his arm fiercely, she drew him towa